How could a Basque-inspired fine dining restaurant by an El Bulli alumni be inside of Kingly Court, a bustling market-style food hub in the middle of London’s heaving Soho?
Fear not, you are in the right place. Alta is here – right at the end of Kingly Court, in a huge two-storey unit with space for up to 100 guests. Once you’re through the doors, that Soho bustle dies down and Alta beckons.
Opened in late September by chef Rob Roy Cameron, Alta takes its inspiration from northern Spain, both in its culture and its cuisine. Everything is cooked over open-fire, imbuing a smoky line throughout the menu. It feels warming and full of soul. Although the continent guides the menu, Cameron looks closer to home for ingredients: pork is from Dorset, beef is from the Lake District, and seafood is from the southwest coast. Wines are mostly European, and the vermouth on tap is Spanish, but ciders are from across the UK.
Alta forms the second restaurant in the growing Mad Restaurants group, which launched with Japanese spot Moi earlier this year. United by a fondness for theatrical live-fire cooking – albeit from different continents – Mad restaurants are billed as being not just great looking restaurants, but also ones that care about ingredients and culinary culture. In a London where the big restaurants typically lean into vibes over food, Alta feels like evidence that you can have the best of both worlds: enough seats to go around and a menu you want to keep coming back to.
Must order: The quirky sardine empanada.
What to drink: A pine martini to start.
Best seat in the house: A table on the ground floor, with views of the kitchen.
Chef
Cameron was born in Botswana and trained in South Africa before spending a decade working and learning in Spain. Here, he worked at El Bulli – the now-shut but still legendary home of molecular gastronomy – and was a key player in the opening of 41 Degrees in Barcelona. In London, he most recently ran the kitchens at popular but short-lived Mayfair spot Gazelle. After a few years of pop ups and residencies in the UK and beyond, Alta marks Cameron’s permanent return to the London restaurant world.
You don’t need to concern yourself with what is and isn’t on the menu, as I am confident that I (admittedly very heavily guided by the team who were not afraid to give a firm “No,” when I apparently requested the wrong dish) have perfected the perfect Alta order.
Naturally, you’re getting the getting the bread and butter, but with it you’re having the sweet, tangy, crunchy house pickles; the mini marquez sausages in tangy Pedro Ximenz saucy; and a plate of the chicharron – great hunks of puffed up pork skin all but built to scoop up the garlicky, brilliant orange mojo rojo sauce they sit on.
You still haven’t even hit the starters (come to Alta belly achingly hungry): for this you’re having the pasta-like tendrils of squid wrapped up in smoky vizcaina sauce and the ingenious sardinine empanada, complete with a fish head and tail poking up boldly through the pastry.
You have permission to slow down at mains, if only to save room for the Basque cheesecake for dessert: share the 35-day aged rib eye – which, although described as medium rare, is cooked more medium and comes with your own vat of salt to dispense as you please. Have a glass of the novel iced cider with that cheesecake, and congratulations: you have completed Alta.
Interiors
Alta is an enormous restaurant – the biggest in Kingly Court, in fact. Included in that 100-cover stat is a private dining room for 12 and a year-round al fresco terrace. On the first floor, a huge stainless steel bar and an open kitchen – complete with a massive grill – form the focal points of the space. The kitchen and bar admittedly take up a lot of room, and the tables can feel quite close to their neighbors (but that is Soho for you).
The design is intentionally undone: tables are neat but linen-less and deliberate cracks of plaster on the wall create an industrial feel. It creates a relaxed atmosphere – the food is grown up and confident, but the team are open for a joke and a chat, too.
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